Money in Politics

How important is money – particularly BIG Money – in politics?  Really!

Well, the truth is: it is very important!  But at the same time, it is also pretty unimportant!

The promise of Big Money to help a candidate for high office win his next election is hard to resist.  The threat of Big Money to hurt a candidate’s chances to win his next election is also hard to resist.   Indeed, even more important than impacting election outcomes is the power that Big Money purchases to influence – or even write – legislation that favors its own interests.  Even if YOUR candidate refuses Big Money, enough other legislators will go along with Big Money’s demands that it won’t matter if YOUR guy is incorruptible.

But how can it be true at the same time that Big Money is not really important?

Because – contrary to popular belief – money has only minimal impact on election outcomes.  Incumbents typically win re-election 90% of the time.  Honest to God!  Party is more important than money spent on campaigns too, as Republicans will typically win in Republican districts and Democrats will typically win in Democratic districts.  Even in primaries, name recognition will count for more than anything (incumbency is just a special case of superior name-recognition).  When two-party political contests are deemed too close to call, it’s independent voters or undecided voters who determine election outcomes.  And these folks don’t make decisions based on issues; if they did, they would probably align themselves with one party or the other.  Independents vote for character, that utterly elusive attribute.  Funny thing: given how rare character is in a politician, it has a real chance to sway a partisan voter to the other party, permanently.

I don’t know what “character” means, but I do know how people decide which candidate has a proper character.  Because a candidate has won their TRUST!  As a factor in electoral politics, TRUST trumps partisan positions on issues, TRUST trumps name recognition and incumbency, and TRUST surely trumps Big Money.  Consider the most flawed candidate for high office in American history, Donald Trump.  Voters trusted him – God help us – they trusted him, lies and all!  Because he wasn’t a politician; because he talked like his voters (“I love the uneducated”); because he reeked of authenticity because he was so unlike any politician, where the word “politician” has come to mean dishonest, untrustworthy; and because he surely fought for his right to be president.  But he surely did not believe in anything except his own right to be on top.  Much the same can be said of his loudest supporters, who surely know how to fight even if they seem always to fight for white supremacy.

Putting Donald Trump aside, how does a candidate for high office win voters’ trust?  They must honestly believe in something, they must know how to message what they believe in, and they have to fight!  (An aside: what did Trump believe in? his own self-interest).

Vermont was not a liberal state when Bernie Sanders won his first elections.  Indeed, the path to his first victory was littered with defeats.  On the way to electoral victory as Burlington’s Mayor, he had probably talked to everyone in Burlington.  On the way to electoral victory as Vermont’s sole Congressman and as the junior senator of the state, I’ll bet that Sanders had probably gone eyeball to eyeball with every voter in the state.  And, if you know anything about Sanders, you know what he stands for and you know he has not wavered in those beliefs over time.  And he doesn’t say one thing in one place and another in another place.  In other words, Vermont’s voters have good reason to TRUST him.  When he ran to become the Democrats' candidate for president in 2016, he had little nationwide name-recognition.  But that quickly exploded nearly enough to win the spot from the best-known Democrat in the nation at the time, Hillary Clinton.  I am convinced – and no one can prove me wrong OR right – that, had he begun his candidacy two months earlier than he did, he would now be in the sixth year of his presidency.

Trust!

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is another shining example of the power of trustworthiness.  It wasn’t hard for her to beat her Republican counterpart back in 2018, as her district was a Democratic stronghold.  But she had to beat Congressman Joe Crowley for the right to run as the Democratic candidate for Congress in New York’s 14th District.  Not only was Crowley his district’s Congressman for twenty years, but he was also very high up the hierarchy of his party in the House.  How did this most unlikely upset ever occur?   I can only imagine that Ocasio-Cortez made her best effort to meet every single voter in the district.  Crowley had power, money, incumbency, and universal name-recognition, so he didn’t have to wage retail politics (the old-fashioned term for going eyeball to eyeball with every voter in your district).  Retail politics trumped power, money, incumbency, and name-recognition.  Trust trumped everything else.  So, everyone knew what AOC believed in; indeed, she invented the expression Green New Deal.  She obviously knew how to message what she believed.  And she fought!  By going eyeball to eyeball with tens of thousands of voters.  The whole country now knows she is a fighter.  And because of all this, she has earned universal name recognition greater than 95% of all the members of Congress.

Most candidates for high office in the United States do not practice retail politics; most do not really inspire trust.  Most office holders are partisan hacks who succumb to the promise of Big Money.  And ultimately it's the voters' fault!  If neither party puts up a candidate who inspires TRUST, don't vote for them.  Vote third party!  Run for office yourself, as an independent.  Don't be part of the corruption.   And tell your friends!

This is the only way we will ever achieve a win-win in national politics.  Dear reader, our democracy is literally in your hands!  ACT as though you give a damn!